


The Last Night

by Margo_Kim



Category: Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
Genre: Angst, Curses, End of the World, F/M, Gen, Hope, Hopeful Ending, Last Day On Earth, Minor Character Death, Minor Character(s), POV Minor Character, star-crossed lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 05:35:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margo_Kim/pseuds/Margo_Kim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three ways Anju chose to spend her last night alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spoilers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoilers/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! I hope you enjoy!

The Final Hour

The moon seemed close enough to reach up and touch as the wagon rattled up Milk Road. The road to Romani Ranch was a familiar one, but it had grown treacherous recently, much like the rest of the world. Anju drew her shawl tighter around herself, though the summer night was unusually warm. What else could she have expected? The sky was burning, after all.

“Anju!” Cremia rushed to the wagon as it reached the house. Anju barely had time to climb down before Cremia had her in a tight embrace. She smelled like milk and cows, the pleasant musk that Anju found pleasant because it was Cremia’s. The women held each other for a long time—sixty-two seconds. Anju counted. Time mattered more when you had so little of it, and the ways you spent it seemed more important than they ever had before. At last, they pulled apart. _Strange how young you seem,_ Anju thought regarding her old friend. _You’ve never looked so young before._

“How are you?” Cremia asked.

They both took a moment to regard the absurdity of that question. “Fine,” Anju said. “I’m glad I have a place to go.”

Cremia’s smile was so sad that Anju had to look away. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad—” But what she was glad for, Cremia couldn’t say. She shook her head and took Anju by the arm. “Come on,” she said. “I’ve got dinner waiting.”

Anju’s last dinner was a simple beef stew ladled into a wooden bowl. “It’s not very grand,” Cremia said apologetically.

“It’s delicious,” Anju said. “It reminds me of the soup my father made.”

Cremia’s sister Romani sat in the corner. When Cremia offered her food, she didn’t seem to hear. Anju looked away as Cremia spoon-fed her sister who ate without a protest. “What happened?” Anju quietly asked Cremia as they washed the dishes in the sink and put them away.

Cremia’s mouth was tight as she shook her head. “I don’t know. She disappeared yesterday. I don’t know where she went, there was a boulder blocking Milk Road until today, but I found her this morning in the barn. She’s been—she’s been like this since then. She won’t say what happened. I don’t think she remembers.”

Anju peeked over her shoulder at Romani. She had known the girl all her life, and she had never seen her sit so silently or so still. If not for the breathing, she looked dead. “What are you going to do?” Anju asked.

Cremia was silent. When Anju turned to look at her, her eyes were as distant as her sister’s. “Why do anything? It’s a kindness, her being like this.”

“Cremia—”

“It makes things easier.” Cremia wiped her hands dry on her dishtowel and hung it up. The earth rattled beneath their feet so badly that Anju would have been thrown to the ground if Cremia hadn’t caught her. “It must be close.” They’d pulled shut the curtains when they’d come into the house. Anju had no desire to open them. Instead, she picked up one of the chairs that had been knocked over by the shaking and sat herself down.

“I’d love some milk,” Anju said.

Cremia smiled just a little. “I’ll pour us the good brand.”

Even with their close friendship, Cremia’d never let Anju drink the richest milk the farm produced. Not without paying. Anju understood. Cremia couldn’t afford to squander her product like that. She didn’t even make it available at the Milk Bar without special request and payment up front. The glass of milk she put on the table in front of Anju cost more than the mayor’s house. “Oh, wow,” Anju said when she took her first sip. “That’s perfect.”

Cremia smiled a little more and tapped her glass against Anju’s. “Kings drink that,” Cremia said. “And if they haven’t, then they aren’t really kings.”

They drank as the world shook. Chairs became treacherous. Without a word, they moved under the table. Cremia propped Romani against her chest, one arm wrapped around her little sister. “I guess you never found Kafei,” Cremia said. A cabinet crashed to the ground. It had shook clean off the wall.

“Never did,” Anju said softly. When she’d been packing up the inn before she fled, trying to decide what to bring and what to leave, the only thing she’d ended up bringing was her half of the mask. The rest of her stuff, it didn’t really matter where it was. The mask she wanted with her when she—when she died. When she died. She was going to die. Here, underneath a table on her best friend’s farm where she was supposed to get married, she was going to die.

Anju blinked tears away and took the hand that Cremia offered. “Grandmother said he eloped with you,” she said as normally as she could manage. “You got him hiding somewhere around here?”

Cremia’s laugh sounded like a sob. “I stashed him in the hay loft. We can fish him out when this ruckus is over.”

“Good. Good. We can tell him how badly he’s been behaving.”

“You’re not mad at me for stealing him away?” Cremia joked as the roof started to cave.

“Trust me,” Anju said. “I understand wanting to marry Kafei.”

The air felt even hotter now. Anju smelled smoke, smoke and nothing else. Cremia squeezed her hand until it hurt then kept squeezing until it didn’t anymore.

 

The moon seemed close enough to reach up and touch as Link ran away. _Goddesses bless you_ , Anju prayed, but not for long. Kafei was in her arms. That drove out all other thoughts from her mind, even thoughts of heroes to whom she owed a debt that could never be repaid. _He is going to die alone_ , she thought as well and banished that thought too. When you had so little time for thinking left, you had to spend it carefully.

They lay on the bed together. His body was strange to her, so small and slight. Anju had never held a man smaller than her. She could cover him with her whole body. _When the end comes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll keep you safe as long as I can, you silly, proud man._

The earth shook more and more until it shook without stopping. They both tightened their grip. “I love you,” he said.

“I love you,” she said.

They didn’t need anything more than that. Everything else they could say— _I missed you, I didn’t know how much I needed you, I’m sorry for worrying you, I’m sorry I couldn’t save you, I’m sorry we didn’t get everything we hoped for, I’m sorry things are ending, but I’m not sorry they are ending this way because there is no other way I would prefer to die than dying in your arms, I want you to be the last thing I see, I want you to be the last thing I feel, I want to hold you for the rest of my life—_ they’d said without saying it.

The air grew hotter and hotter. Through the window, Anju could see the sky. It was on fire. She looked away to Kafei’s face and kept her eyes there.

Something floated in through the window. It was the sound of music. A strange melody that she would swear she’d heard before and yet she would also swear that she never. The world was ending and someone was playing a song. The world was ending and she held her husband in her arms. And as the last notes of the haunting, beautiful tune ended, Anju stared into Kafei’s eyes then closed her own so that she would see nothing else for the rest of her life.

 

The moon seemed close enough to reach up and touch as Link pressed their wedding mask back into Kafei’s hands. “Keep it,” he said. “You’ll need it tomorrow.”

“Link—” Kafei began.

“Keep it.”

The two boys stared each other down, a silent argument through eyes and eyebrows, until Kafei curled his fingers around the mask and took it back. “Stay safe,” Kafei said.

Link smiled and put his hands behind his head. “Not the plan for the evening.”

 _They look so alike_ , Anju thought. Link had the same look in his eyes as Kafei did. It wasn’t a child’s look. His body was young. His eyes were ancient. Anju had never thought too deeply about the boy who rented the Knife Room. She’d thought him Kafei’s friend, his helper, a kind person, but nothing more. Anju knew, looking at him now, that she had been very, very wrong.

“Are you going to stop it?” she asked.

Kafei and Link turned to look at her. She saw the pain in Kafei’s eyes, his wife still burdened with hope when he had let go. Link didn’t look hurt. Link looked strong. “Yes,” he said. “I think I’m ready.” His fairy bobbed around his head like she was angry at him, and Link grinned at her. “I am ready,” he corrected himself. Then he looked serious again. “This is the last final night. I promise that.”

The fairy said something Anju couldn’t quite hear. It sounded like, “One way or another, it will be.”

She knelt down by the strange boy and kissed him on the cheek. “The Goddesses bless you,” she said solemnly, “and keep you safe.”

For a moment, he looked every inch the young boy he was supposed to be, flustered and blushing. The moment didn’t pass. “Uh.” He backed up, keeping his eyes on Anju like she might make a sudden movement to pinch his cheeks. “Igottagobye,” he said in one long rush and bolted out the door. She heard him pounding down the stairs and out the inn door.

“Our hero,” Kafei said wryly. “I hope he doesn’t have to go near a girl to stop the moon.”

The ground rumbled worse than it ever had before. If Anju hadn’t already been on the ground, she’d have fallen to it. Kafei rushed to her and wrapped his arms around her, like his small, slight body could keep her safe. She wrapped her arms around him, like she could do the same for him. She was so scared. For the first time since the moon had started falling, she felt honestly terrified.

She might live. Link was going to try and stop the moon. Anju might survive this night. The thought had never occurred to her before, and it scared her more deeply than anything she had ever felt before. She could be stoic in the face of death when there was no hope for anything better. Now there was hope for anything better, and she couldn’t keep the tears from her eyes.

“It’s alright, it’s alright,” Kafei murmured as she wept, but she knew that he thought he was lying. He didn’t believe that Link would save the world. Anju did. Goddesses help her, she did.

And then nothing was shaking but herself. “Wait,” she said, lifting her head from Kafei’s shoulder. “Why’s everything stopped?”

They rushed to the window. Kafei jumped for a view, and Anju caught him below his armpits and hoisted him up. The sky was nothing but the moon, its hideous face grimacing down at them. But it was coming no closer. Termina was still. “What happened?” Kafei asked. She heard hope creeping into his voice as well.

“I can’t see anything,” she said.

Kafei jumped out of her arms. “The roof.”

Small as he was now, he sprinted ahead of her. _Possibly so I won’t pick him up again_ , Anju thought as she ran. He burst through the door to the roof before she did. He gasped before she did. “The giants,” he said numbly. “The four giants are holding up the moon.”

It had been a strange week, but that was still not a sentence Anju ever expected to ever hear. _He did it. Link really did it._

Then a light went up from the Clock Tower to the moon. Then the giants began to buckle. “No!” Anju cried as the moon’s eyes began to glow.

“I will consume,” it screamed. Anju felt its hatred in her bones. “I will consume everything.” The earth began to rumble again. Anju could feel the heat of it all over. The sky was on fire. She reached for Kafei as her knees buckled.

“We were supposed to get married tomorrow,” Kafei said as the moon crashed towards them. She was so sorry that he’d lost his certainty in death too. She turned from the Clock Tower and buried her face in his shoulder. She wanted to die facing Kafei.

“I love you,” she said against his neck. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too,” he said. They held each other so tightly their arms ached. “There’s nowhere else I want to be.” He didn’t need to say it for Anju to know that it was true. But she appreciated him saying it.

And then the shaking stopped.

They kept holding onto awhile to be on the safe side. Then Anju cautiously lifted her head up. She peeked up at the moon. It held fast in the sky.

“Not to sound ungracious,” Kafei said, “but that moon either needs to fall or not.”

They waited. Anju had to remind herself to breath. She felt his heart beating against her chest. _If we live to see tomorrow, we see the Great Fairy first thing in the morning_ , she thought numbly. _Because if we live through this, there are a lot of things I want to do with my husband that this body’s not really appropriate for._ She rested her head back on her shoulder. She didn’t want to watch what would happen.

Then the air grew cooler. The sweat dried on her skin. “Look,” Kafei said, his voice thick with awe. Anju raised her head and squinted her eyes against the light. The moon was engulfed in a rainbow light that hurt her eyes too look at. The giants stepped back, the earth shaking with each step, as the light rose, taking the moon up with it into the clear blue sky. She heard music. The giants were singing. The sun peeked over the edge of the sky.

They’d get married today. First they’d visit the Fairy, then they’d get married. Then they’d go on a honeymoon. She loved visiting the Bay. Anju had the feeling it would be safer to travel now. Then they’d have to start having children. At least two of them, but as many as it took to get one of each sex. They’d have to upgrade the Inn too. Add another floor. Build a bigger dining room. Clock Town was getting so big nowadays, people visiting from all over Termina. They could take the extra business.

 “We made it,” Kafei said. Anju tightened her grip on his hand. “We’re alive.”

They were _alive_ and she had to start planning for that now. Life was short. Anju had learned that well these last three days. Life was short and there was too much to do. And when you only had a little time, it mattered all the more how you spent it.


End file.
